By ALASTAIR PEARSON ’14
Returning students passing by the Chemistry hallway may have noticed some of the colorful additions to the room of Mr. Surrarer, veteran instructor in the chemical sciences. Despite his discipline’s usually more impersonal approach, Mr. Surrarer likes to enliven his classes with the aid of a variety of tropical animals that have quickly gained the loving attention of his hundred-plus junior students. The creatures, including Dennis, a snapping turtle, Diesel, the class alligator, as well as five unnamed piranhas, are a classroom fixture, and the former two can often be seen making covert pilgrimages over back-of-the-class desks or warming themselves in the front pockets of adventurous pupils.
According to Mr. Surrarer, there are a number of benefits to caring for unusual wildlife: \”So many of the young men I teach don’t have the opportunity to see these kinds of animals at home. I try to let them see that not every exotic animal is something so
dangerous or unusual that it is beyond our care.”
